1. Field of the Invention
The present finding concerns a clothes hanger with a fold-away hook.
2. Background
A common clothes hanger is made up of an arched body, equipped at the centre with a projecting hook. The hook is made up of a steel filiform body which is fixedly interlocked, with its lower part, into the arched body, made from plastic, or it is made up of a shaped band, which is made from the same material as the body.
Normally, clothes hangers are reused many times, therefore, after the hung clothing has been removed, they are stored away while waiting to be used again.
The drawback during such an operative step consists of the considerable bulk required for storing clothes hangers, since each clothes hanger, when packed or put away, takes up a two-dimensional space that is defined, on one side, by the width of the arched body and, on the other side, by the height of the arched body summed to the projection of the hook.
In practical use, the bulk of the clothes hanger constitutes an important parameter to be evaluated: both in clothes hanger manufacturing centers, in which it is required for there to be the maximum reduction of the sizes of the packages used for sending the clothes hangers themselves to the garment maker, and, in particular, when the clothes hanger is used for sending clothing items directly to the end users, as is becoming increasingly more common through mail-order sales channels, in which the bulk of the clothes hangers affects the dimensions, and consequently the cost of the packaging and of the relative delivery costs.
At the current state of the art clothes hangers are known, the bulk of which can become smaller when they are not being used, as an example, those described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,726,452, 4,487,343, 2,428,820, 4,063,670, 462,439 and GB 2,355,922, in which the hook is held on the arched body by means of mobile connections which allow it, if needed, to be disengaged and to slide inside the space defined by the arched body itself.
Disadvantageously, in the aforementioned documents, making these clothes hangers requires a very complex manufacturing technique, since the manufacturing solutions for allowing the hook to rotate foresee the use of two separate pieces, which means that, in order to make the hook mobile between the two elements, it is necessary to strongly modify the configuration both of the arched body, and of the lower end of the hook, with considerable costs in terms of molding, of assembly and of production in general.
Moreover, in the manufacturing solutions known to this day, due to the mobility of the connection between hook and arched body, the clothes hanger, when it is being used, is not rigid, like in common clothes hangers, in which the arched body and the hook form a single rigid body, which, in practical use, means that it is difficult for the hung clothing to be held in an optimal manner, to the point of actually falling off.
The purpose of the present finding is that of foreseeing a clothes hanger that, when it is not being used, is capable of taking up a configuration with small bulk and the manufacture of which, is substantially simplified with respect to used manufacturing techniques for manufacturing similar known types of clothes hangers.
Specifically, the purpose of the present finding is to make a clothes hanger provided with a hook that is made in a single structure with the body of the clothes hanger itself and in which said hook can be released from the seat of origin through a simple and rapid manual maneuver.
Again specifically, the purpose of the present finding is to make a clothes hanger with a fold-away hook, which does not substantially move away from the configuration of a normal clothes hanger with a fixed hook, so that the usual molding equipment, subject to small modifications, can be used, to the benefit of the low cost of the end product.
Again specifically, one purpose of the present finding is to make a clothes hanger with a fold-away hook which when being used, i.e. with its hook extended, forms a rigid structure that can hold the hung clothing item tightly.
Again specifically, the purpose of the present finding is to make a clothes hanger with a fold-away hook in which the movement of the hook requires a simple and rapid manual operation.